NFL Network Sacked By Dish
Pro Football Channel Loses 4 Million Subs In Transfer To America’s Top 200 Package
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 2/20/2008 10:45:00 AM
The NFL Network has taken another distribution sack.
Dish Network dropped the pro football league’s in-house channel from its America’s Top 100 Package, moving it to the Americas Top 200 package Feb. 20. That means NFL Network has lost about 4 million subscribers -- America’s Top 100 reaches an estimated 12 million subscribers, versus some 8 million for America’s Top 200 -- reducing its base to some 31 million.
NFL Network last year absorbed another major carriage hit, when Comcast, backed by a judge’s ruling, migrated the service to a sports tier, resulting in the loss of about 8 million subscribers.
NFL Network is now positioned on channel 154 on Dish Network’s America’s Top 200 package.
“We are aware of Dish’s unfortunate decision, which is not in the best interest of its many subscribers who are football fans, especially this week with NFL Network’s exclusive coverage of the scouting combine featuring incoming college players from all over the country,” said Dan Masonson, the NFL’s director of corporate communications.
Dish Network officials declined to comment.
However in a note, entitled “NFL Network Free Preview Ending,” which was posted by Dish Network to its retailers’ Web site, the satellite service informed that: "NFL Network is moving out of Free Preview into America's Top 200 package, effective Wednesday, February 20th, 2008.
In order to prepare customers who currently subscribe to America's Top 100 or Top 100+, DISH Network will be communicating to customers that NFL Network is rolling up and moving from Free Preview to the America's Top 200 package effective February 19, 2008. This communication will begin on February 15th, 2008 at 11:59MST.”
Despite public and often strident remarks in the media and attempts to gain footing for its cause on Capitol Hill, NFL Network could not gain carriage traction with Time Warner Cable, Comcast Corp. and other cable operators during the 2007 football season. 
The distribution disconnect -- over the league’s game plan for expanded basic positioning and about a 70 cents monthly subscriber fee, and what distributors believe is a service whose value is largely tied to its eight-game primetime package -- eventually led the league to draft NBC and CBS to simulcast the regular-season finale that pitted the then-undefeated New England Patriots against the New York Giants, in what amounted to a preview of Super Bowl XLII.
